Song of Six Pence
by Legare Virtuoso
Summary: Haru is not the woman Xanxus recalls marrying. Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king? Sequel to Her Majesty's Pet.


**Title:** Song of Six Pence  
><strong>Author:<strong> **legare_virtuoso**  
><strong>Rating:<strong> R  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> Xanxus. Crazy Xanxus. Sex.  
><strong>Word count:<strong> 1757  
><strong>Summary:<strong> Haru is not the woman Xanxus recalls marrying. Sequel to Her Majesty's Pet.  
><strong>Author Notes:<strong> I put this off long enough. Behold the end of this particular Xanxus/Haru series.

Deep in the darkest place in the world dwells a princess in a cage, chained by her love and cared for by the scourge of the earth. They call her the Winter Princess, cover her in funeral white and watch her fade in and out of reality from a sickness that started in a time that can no longer exist. She whispers stories into the stagnant air, tales of a bygone era that lasts only in her memories, and they can do naught but listen in silence as she tells them what they could have lost. Impossible things, facts that make their science roll in its grave. Sometimes she whispers in ancient tongues, sometimes in the language of her love, and still others she speaks in moans of agony. But always, without fail, her stories begin with the same words.

Once upon a time there was an ordinary girl who travelled through time, watched the future be saved, and went home only to realize she was going to die.

It took awhile for the girl to realize it, no signs visible in anyone else to herald about the conclusion that her illness was exactly what would kill her. Eight years from the day she began to die, the first time she sat in a meeting with the head of a mafia famiglia as a serious applicant was the day she felt the first pangs of something clearly wrong. She thought it meant that she was stronger, ready to take on the full weight of her responsibilities. But the rings they gave her wouldn't light no matter how angry or focused she became, and she wept for her shame. Gently, ever so gently, the girl was nudged into the care of the genius baby with isolationist flair.

He warned her that there was no secret switch or even an acquired knack to open boxes, just enough Fiamma Voltage to flip the internal mechanism and the proper wavelength to match the internal lock.

The boxes opened for her, a rainbow of flames that wreathed her and loved her even as they frolicked in the park. She's tired just watching the odd selection of animals, too tired to really protest when the big white lion decides it likes how she smells. When the same lion also decides that he has no idea what the word 'sharing' means, the girl just laughs and tries not to think about the repercussions. And when love deserts her, the beast is all that remains as a steady constant. She was its life as much as it was hers, and oddly enough they were quite happy with each other.

Then the girl meets the dark and angry man who is the match of the great beast she calls her friend, and suddenly the girl doesn't want to be just a girl anymore.

On and off again they meet, chance tempered by fascinated planning, and the girl keeps careful count of just how many times she's seen the man. And one day the girl decides to take her best gal pal shopping, a treat in the wake of yet another removal of her friend from her side. The Winter Princess laughs bitterly when she reaches this part of the story and sometimes has to stop to wipe the freshly coughed blood from her lips. The story doesn't end well, starts with a case of mistaken identity and ends with a maelstrom of violence that went far out of her control. Knights were sent to retrieve the Queen, and the shadow court that followed were the only ones to remember the Princess even existed. And she signed a contract in blood with the King of the Devils, and the Winter Princess sets into motion her own demise.

They didn't understand it then, why the boxes danced better for her or why the Princess and the King could share one box with equal power.

But now the Princess knows, kneels on her bed every night and prays to whatever god is listening that she could get better and go home again. She is the scapegoat of a future that never was, the girl whose very fighting spirit fled from her like water through a sieve. The Princess cries even as she tells her story, watches the way the baby edges away from her with unspeakable sorrow. He will die as she dies if he comes nearer, this emissary of her King that bears the truth with grim silence and determination. He alone knows the true reason the Princess must wait all alone until the end of her days. And then she tells another story, a story about the day she realized she was going to die and the day she damned the man she loved to follow her to the grave.

Once, the Princess went for a walk and never came back. Stolen away from home and battered beyond what her frail body could bear, all she could do was wait for a rescue that nearly didn't come. The ransom asked of the Devil's Court was far too much (so she thought and prayed would not be paid), and the Princess was doomed to die a most horrifying death. But then they came, all ringed in flames and rage, and paint the land red with blood. She laughs a heroine's brave laugh, takes the resulting pain with mad fixation, and when the ceiling caves in she is not surprised. The Princess is, however, surprised to wake up tired with her hands in white and black fur, a whirling cyclone of flames surrounding her and her own rage streaking across the King's face.

She remembers her wedding day with tears in her eyes, the day the Winter Princess wed the Devil King in front of all the Knights and Devils and walked away the happiest woman in the world.

The Princess remembers the day she was quietly told she would never carry a child to term as the worst day of her life. The flames she bore would kill the babe, the flames she never had would burn in her husband's veins for all eternity, and she herself couldn't support her own life if she ever tried. And that was the day the Princess quietly told her husband that she was going away to learn to be a proper Queen, kissed him as if she was telling the truth, and walked out the door into the welcoming arms of the guardians of hell itself. She asked for a visitor, one person in confidence to know what she did, one person to carry her lie to fruition and save her husband's life.

He went mad before she could try, saw her in the mirrors and stroked himself to completion when he thought it was her hand in his stead. Her decision was too late to save them both.

The Princess sent her messenger to make her disappearance easier, and it took them far too long for the child to learn how to become the Princess herself. But she could watch, whispered through the misty mirror in her wall how she would react when kissed and loved, and so the Princess kept the King from knowing. Slowly the seasons passed and she grew ever weaker, whispered less and less to the fake Princess in the mirror. And one day the whispers stopped, replaced by the hum of machines and hacking coughs that exhausted her and broke will to live all the further. It hurt to live, even worse to die, and her keepers refused to let her suffer the full extent of either experience. The Knights who formerly lived in dreams spoke to her on occasion, asked her what went wrong and received a tight lipped smile instead.

One spring day, a lion woke its master with a roar that sounded of rage and sorrow twined together in haunting echo of madness and despair.

But the King did not notice, buried his face in his pillow and wondered why he remembered the smell of flowers and love in its place. He turned his head and dreamed of a day the bells rang twice ten and a laughing woman with no face asked him to be hers for forever. And he burned as he too remembered the woman he loved, safe in his mind where nothing could hurt her, whispered to the wind how he would never forget and never forgive. And in the morning, he called his men to his side and plotted how to light the world on fire in memory of a whispered dream.

As they stormed the gates of hell, he called for his princess. When they finally found her, nestled in her machines and eyes closed for all eternity, the King went mad.

He keeps her forever in his castle, buried behind guards and demons alike. She is chained forever to his side, the ghost of his happiness and the keeper of his memories. But she stalks the halls with a cat's grace, a grim smile, and slowly goes mad in his embrace. Her name was once Haru, and long ago she was the queen of the Varia and so much more, but now she is dead and all that remains is a coffin in a grave. Still she sings in her cage of bone and blood, a haunting melody that drives her love into madness with the gentle caress of the winter witch that she has become. For once upon a time a girl went to the future and helped save the world, came back in time and discovered what true happiness was. And in her death she clung to her happiness with the perseverance of a poltergeist, watched her reason for living forget who she was and remember her smile all at once, and that girl in turn forgot her reason for living.

Deep in the darkness of the Varia castle sits a king on a blood soaked throne, and by his side sits a man who tells him stories about the ghost of someone he once loved. His name is Xanxus, or at least that's what they call him, and he will never be able to remember the Winter Princess's name. She sings in his veins, grips his gun with frightening power and smiles at him through the mirror, and sometimes she whispers a name in his ears. And when he wakes, he roars with flames and rips his flesh from his bones, for he cannot remember that which he should not have forgotten.


End file.
